Well, you came to the right place because today we’re gonna talk about …

…FITNESS INFOGRAPHICS!

I’m gonna teach you how to create fitness infographics for Instagram to make more money for your business.

Sound good? Good. Let’s just dive right in.

WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT

The great Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

I love Mr. Clemens, but he never had an Instagram.

Plain n’ simple, infographics on Instagram work.

If done correctly, they are:

Easily discovered on the Explore page (attention-grabbing)

Simple to make after some practice

Digested quickly by your audience

SHAREABLE between other influencers (and followers)

VALUABLE to your audience

Yes, there are many people doing them (and many people NOT doing them), but most are really shitty.

Since you’re reading this article, your infographics may look shitty too, but that’s fine because everyone successful at making them had to go through that stage at some point.

As an example, I will use myself. On April 26, 2017, I had 1,319 followers.

74 likes, 18 saves, and 5 comments.

This was my first ever infographic on May 17th, 2017. Not terrible, but definitely not good.

The background needs to be white. Black background is harder to read (think newspapers – white with black letters).

My green checks are crooked.

My header letters are not big enough to grab your attention while scrolling through the Explore page/your feed.

Lots of writing; could be simplified and more concise.

Needs to be neater and more organized.

Like I said, not terrible. But we can make some improvements.

Let’s jump ahead a little over a year later and see what I’ve done differently.

1,039 likes. 1,300 saves. 15 comments.

2,114 likes. 1,400 saves. 158 comments.

A touch better, yeah?

Do all posts perform this well? Hell no. But it’s an improvement, for sure.

And as of writing this, I’m currently at 12K followers.

I haven’t gained as quickly as some others, but I’ve made progress and I’m happy with the audience I am creating.

I like to put my following in perspective by imagining if all 12,000 of those people were listening to me speak on a stage. That usually does the trick when I feel the need to compare myself to others.

STEP 1: Find a creation platform.

It will feel slightly overwhelming at first, but if you watch through the tutorials on the website and play around a little bit, you’ll get the hang of it. I’d also add that I prefer to make the graphics on my laptop. The app works fine, but fat fingers can make it difficult to create with precision.

Aadam Ali just gets it.

If you wanna get fancy or have more tech skillz than I, feel free to use Adobe Photoshop. I’ve never used it, but plenty others have and they love it.

Check out Aadam Ali’s Instagram (@physiqonomics) to see a master at work. I would honestly be doing him a disservice if I called his illustrations “infographics”. They are by far the best drawings on fitness on the Internet.

There is no wrong answer here, just pick one that best suits you and move to step 2.

STEP 2: Idea Creation – What’s the purpose of the infographic?

Alright, let’s not overthink this one.

Don’t get me wrong, you want to spend some time on this, but it can cause paralysis by analysis trying to figure out the PERFECT title for your infographic.

Some questions to ask yourself to overcome this:

What has worked for people similar to your brand/niche? Is there a way you can put a spin on it?

Do you wanna be a contrarian and go the opposite route of what most people say?

Do you want it to be funny? Entertaining? Informative?

Do you want to create a list?

To quote my man crush, Nate Green, before every post ask yourself, “What exactly am I trying to say?” Then at the end of the post, “Did I say what I wanted to?”

If yes, you’re good to go.

The main takeaway with this step: just get started.

Have a rough sketch and start creating. You’ll mold it to your liking as you keep working and, sometimes, you’ll take it in a completely different direction than you intended.

Follow that muse.

STEP 3: Content Creation

There’s only so much I can say in this section. This is where you have to showcase your creative talents and bleed the infographic with your personal brand.

Meaning if you’re primarily targeting women who want to look and feel better, your infographics may look similar to Marci Nevin’s or Leslie Hooper’s:

I actually reached out to Leslie and Marci to give some tips on their success.

Here’s what they had to say:

Leslie Hooper (@hooper.fit) – “Keep it simple. The fewer the words the better. You have three seconds to grab the attention of your audience while competing with thousands of other posts. This may be the first time someone has read anything on your topic, so make sure it’s so basic a third grader could understand it. Bonus points if it elicits an emotional reaction using wit, depth, irony, etc. And please, for the love of god, make sure the text and images are spaced out and centered appropriately. Perhaps Sweet Brown said it best, when the infographic isn’t aesthetically pleasing, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” It doesn’t matter how mind-blowing the content is. If it’s an eyesore, no one’s paying attention.”

Marci Nevin (@marcinevin) – “My best advice is to keep the graphic as clear and simple as possible. You want it to be eye-catching, but also readable so that it keeps someone’s attention and is easy to digest. For example, “Great Foods For Fat Loss.” I find that lots of white space helps with that. Use a white background, simple graphics and only one or two different colors for the text. Make sure that the text isn’t too small and has enough space between lines. Also, concise lists seem to be really popular.”

But if you’re like me–I target younger men and women who are intermediate/advanced lifters; men are typically more drawn to my personality/brand/interests–you’re going to make infographics like this:

Each infographic is visually appealing and grabs your attention immediately by pictures or text (BIG CATCHY TITLES) or both.

They are concise. There aren’t long paragraphs of texts. Each one mimics easy-to-read lists.

The images are clear (no borders around the images! Google .png files if possible) and relatable to what the infographic is trying to portray.

The words used are relative to the audience, i.e., most women don’t want to know how to “get big”.

I used green checks in mine, but green checks and red X’s can be useful to quickly distinguish between right and wrong.

Notice the amount of white space. It is even throughout and the infographic is designed efficiently.

This part will take a while to figure out how you want to structure your infographics, but it will develop over time.

Test and learn, test and learn, test and learn.

Step 4 – Refinement

This is where you have to bring out your inner neurotic OCD housewife (think Monica, from Friends).

People are going to give you about 2 seconds to grab their attention on Instagram. Even if the content is amazing, they are going to keep scrolling if you have poor spacing issues, grammar errors, and bland colors.

Make sure to add your watermark to each infographic (people WILL steal them if they’re popular). A good rule of thumb is placing one at the bottom and one in the middle (in case they cut the bottom one off).

These small details can often go overlooked because this is one of the last things you have to do before you’re done, but it is worth the extra time to take your infographic from good to great.

Step 5 – Captions: Where The Magic Happens

If you get anything right, it needs to be this part. This is where you need to be the most YOU possible.

If you put 10 captions in front of me from 10 different people, I could easily pick which one was written by Jordan or Carter.

With over 400K followers each, I think it’s a good idea to listen to what they have to say.

I asked them both what advice they would give to making better infographics and they were (not surprisingly) aligned:

Jordan & Carter – “You need to be able to look at the picture and not need to look at the caption to derive the value from the post. Keep the picture simple and use the caption to explain the nitty-gritty. Don’t be afraid to max out the captions. For metrics, look at saves over likes.”

And as I mentioned earlier, people literally spend less than 2 seconds on your IG post before they determine if they wanna keep going.

With that being said, which part of the caption do you think is mega important?

The very first line.

Think about something that would cause you to keep reading.

As for the rest: I challenge you to write a long, compelling caption. You want to prove you’re a good writer? This is the way to do it.

The caption is where people become invested in you and your personality. Not everybody will read to the end and that’s okay, because the ones who do are more likely to buy from you. That’s the goal, remember? The goal isn’t to appease to your childhood friends who are frustrated with your captions that “no one reads.”

Speaking of the goal, you need to write the caption from your perspective as a COACH.

I’m sometimes bad at this, but when I do it right it can be a huge push towards gaining leads. Mention how this infographic applied to a client, how you implement this technique as a coach, etc. It can be easy to just write about the infographic and elaborate what’s in the picture, but always remember the purpose of the post.

Some other tips for captions include:

Don’t write huge blocks of text. Break up each paragraph by only using a few sentences (notice how I’m writing this article).

Use periods or dashes to separate paragraphs in the caption. Quick tip on this: you cannot have any spaces between lines when you try to line break into a new paragraph.

Determine your emoji preference. Some people like to sprinkle in emojis here and there and some people (like me) rarely use emojis. This is your preference and will depend on your tone for the post.

Limit exclamation points. The overlord of this site has written adamantly about this topic.

Don’t overuse ALL CAPS. Again, this can get annoying and sound like you’re CONSTANTLY YELLING AT YOUR AUDIENCE. If it gets repetitive, you take away the emphasis from using a strategically placed all caps word/phrase when it matters.

Call to action. The algorithm changes all the time, but it almost always awards engagement. Asking your audience a question or encouraging a comment can improve impressions on your post. Every once in a while, sneak in a right hook and directly ask your audience to DM you about becoming a client or clicking a link in your bio.

Do your research on popular hashtags to your audience and play around with different amounts. The limit is 30 per post. Put them as your first comment to keep the caption cleaner.

Post to your Instagram Story. This is the icing on the cake. Instagram stories have been booming lately and this is where a large majority will discover your post. Just click the paper airplane icon under your picture (next to comment bubble icon) and click “Add post to your story.”

Do not underestimate the power of a compelling caption. Don’t purposefully try to make the caption long or short, just focus on making it fucking amazing.

Step 6 – Determine Your Frequency

People love to argue about quality or quantity and the answer is always both.

Posting three shitty posts will have shitty engagement. Posting one amazing post will be better than 3 shitty posts. I would recommend putting out as many posts as you can while keeping quality as high as possible.

At the end of the day, it’s gonna come down to how talented you are and prioritizing what your time is worth.

Let’s bring this shit home with another list because everyone likes a good list.

1x, 2x, 3x+ per day. This is going to be individual and you’ve gotta determine what your time is worth. Re-read above.

Leverage others. The great perk of infographics is their shareability. If you wanna post three times a day, try posting two of your own and one of somebody else’s. This also increases the likelihood they will repost yours (but don’t expect them to).

When inspiration and creativity are low, you can repost your old content that has performed well. If you’ve been doing it for a while, you should have a big bank saved up. You can also make tweaks and make them look better than the last time you posted.

Consistency is key. This is cliche, but I don’t care. This is the foundation of making these work.

Figuring the right frequency for you will take some time, but as long as you remain consistent you will find your groove.

The Part Where We Wrap This Up

Look, you don’t HAVE to do infographics.

Many people have great success on Instagram without using infographics.

But can they work for you and put more money in your pocket?

Absolutely.

It’s not going to be a shortcut to success or any shit like that, but if you follow these six steps and truly CARE about the audience you’re helping, it definitely won’t hurt.

Oh yeah, and before we go. Follow me and send me a DM if this helped you.

About the Author

Matt's a graduate of the University of Kentucky with a Bachelor’s degree in Dietetics and is now a Registered Dietitian. He's also a professional natural bodybuilder and earned his NGA Natural Bodybuilding pro card in 2016. He takes pride in being an online fitness coach who teaches people how to use fitness to enhance their lives, not consume their lives. Check out more at McLeodConsultingServices.com
or on Instagram.